"The reform has to happen at a more fundamental level," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "Congress has to go back and reform the laws. The process is broken. It needs to be fixed."

The trick is to preserve entrepreneurial incentives while routing out "bad" patents. Some 40% to 50% of current patents are worthless, Dulaney says.

He and others want to see the patent process opened up for review, as in Europe and elsewhere. Each patent application would get outside input, helping ensure that it covers something truly innovative.

"The problem is, we see fairly obvious patents," said Rich Tehrani, president of the Technology Market Corp., a publishing house. Peer review would help solve that problem, he says.

Others would like to see a dedicated patent court system - an idea that's been tried in Japan. That would let more informed judges rule on cases without stripping away any patent protections, says Bill Merritt, CEO of InterDigital, (IDCC) which develops wireless technologies. "The patent system itself is very good," he said. "Let's just fix how we implement it and put more resources into it."

Some reformers want to go further by prohibiting companies that don't sell a product from making a patent claim in that area. The idea is to stamp out so-called patent trolls.But everyone has a right to license their patents, Belt says.

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The patent issue is not going away any time soon and lawyers studying technology and patents will continue to do very well. Expect many more high profile cases.

"The reform has to happen at a more fundamental level," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "Congress has to go back and reform the laws. The process is broken. It needs to be fixed."

The trick is to preserve entrepreneurial incentives while routing out "bad" patents. Some 40% to 50% of current patents are worthless, Dulaney says.

He and others want to see the patent process opened up for review, as in Europe and elsewhere. Each patent application would get outside input, helping ensure that it covers something truly innovative.

"The problem is, we see fairly obvious patents," said Rich Tehrani, president of the Technology Market Corp., a publishing house. Peer review would help solve that problem, he says.

Others would like to see a dedicated patent court system - an idea that's been tried in Japan. That would let more informed judges rule on cases without stripping away any patent protections, says Bill Merritt, CEO of InterDigital, (IDCC) which develops wireless technologies. "The patent system itself is very good," he said. "Let's just fix how we implement it and put more resources into it."

Some reformers want to go further by prohibiting companies that don't sell a product from making a patent claim in that area. The idea is to stamp out so-called patent trolls.But everyone has a right to license their patents, Belt says.

----

The patent issue is not going away any time soon and lawyers studying technology and patents will continue to do very well. Expect many more high profile cases.